The Diary of an Unloved Wife novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: One Sentence Back

Four hundred people stopped breathing at once.

Winslow stood very still at the foot of the podium steps.

His mother didn't look away from him.

"Endicott and Company will be run from June by my nephew," she said.

"He's dull, and he's honest, and he has never in his life read anything that wasn't his."

A nervous laugh went round the room and died.

"My son spent five years doing something to his wife that I won't describe with her in this room," she said.

"Most of you read about it on Friday. Some of you laughed at her for it."

Someone near the front put down a glass very carefully.

"A man who will do that to his wife will do it to your accounts," she said. "He leaves the firm on Monday. That's all."

She stepped back from the microphone.

For a second nobody clapped, because nobody knew if they should.

Then the old man from number nine began, slowly, with his big dry hands.

The room followed him.

Winslow turned and looked at me across the ballroom.

Then he walked out through the front doors, and the doormen held them open for him.

I stayed for exactly one more glass of champagne.

Moira held my arm the whole time and didn't say a word.

When the old man took her home, she kissed my cheek.

"Go on, pet," she said. "He's waiting for you."

She didn't mean Winslow.

Malachy went to get the truck from the garage on Boylston Street.

It had started to rain, fine and cold, the first rain of the spring.

I waited under the hotel's awning with my coat over my dress.

Winslow was standing at the curb ten feet away, without a coat, getting wet.

He'd been there the whole time.

He came under the awning, and the doorman found something to do at the far end.

His hair was plastered flat.

He looked younger than I'd ever seen him, and smaller.

"She was right," he said. "I know she was right."

I didn't answer.

"I'm not asking for anything back. Not you. Not the firm."

His voice was rough.

"One sentence, Margery. That's all. Tell me you forgive me, and I'll never ask you for anything again."

The rain ran off the edge of the awning between us.

I thought about it.

I owed him that much, to think about it honestly.

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